Wednesday, April 5, 2017

intense april storm system... (pm.05.apr.17)>

Wednesday's stats:

Low temp: 50.5F (10.3C)
High temp: 64.1F (17.8C) -- updated @ 8:05pm
Rainfall: 1.33" (3.4cm) -- updated through midnight

The average rainfall for the entire month of April is 1.90" (4.8cm), and you can see from the stats right above that we received the vast majority of that monthly total today -- in just about seven hours, between roughly 2:00 and 9:00am.  It was also very windy during those early morning thunderstorms, and at least according to the rumor mill today, a large fallen tree near the government hospital in Dharamsala has been the cause of our very long power outage.  Even though we had a mix of clouds and sun for most of the day, temperatures (both low and high) have been about 8ºF/3.5ºC cooler than normal for this stage of April.

And this is not over.  The center of our upper-level storm system is still developing and deepening as it moves into Afghanistan, and fresh thunderstorm development is evident on satellite pics this evening off to our west and southwest.  It's looking like we will have plenty more action overnight into Thursday morning.  There will likely again be some dry periods, but waves of showers, thunderstorms, and gusty winds are a threat all the way through Friday, as this upper-level system swings across northern Pakistan and Kashmir.  By Friday evening some significant stabilization will set in, putting an end to all of this.  Keep in mind that the coldest air of this system has yet to arrive, so the snow potential up-mountain from us will be increasing between late tonight and Friday.

A much more quiet and pleasant stretch of weather is in the forecast for the weekend into early next week, though it's now looking like temperatures may be a little slower to rebound than earlier expected.  It will probably be Tuesday or Wednesday before we get back to normal/average for this time of year.